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Monday, April 15, 2013

"For the third year in a row, opium cultivation has increased across Afghanistan...“This country is on its way to becoming the world’s first true narco-state,” said one international law enforcement official, who did not want to be quoted criticizing the Afghan government. “The opium trade is a much bigger part of the economy already than narcotics ever were in Bolivia or Colombia"

For the third year in a row, opium cultivation has increased across
Afghanistan, reversing earlier drops stemming from a decade-long
international and Afghan government effort to combat the drug trade,
according to a United Nations report released on Monday.

The report’s findings raised concerns among international law
enforcement officials that if the trend continued, opium would be the
country’s major economic activity after the departure of foreign
military forces in 2014, leading to the specter of what one referred to
as “the world’s first true narco-state.”

Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and last
year accounted for 75 percent of the world’s heroin supply. “The
assumption is it will reach again to 90 percent this year,” said
Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the United Nations’ top counternarcotics official
here.

The report, the Afghanistan Opium Risk Assessment 2013, issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and
based on extensive surveys, found that opium cultivation has increased
in 12 of the country’s 34 provinces. Herat, in western Afghanistan, is
the only province in which cultivation is expected to decrease, the
report said.

The report suggests that Taliban insurgents took advantage of insecurity
in several provinces to assist opium farmers and win popular support —
protecting an important form of income for their operations. Opium
cultivation has increased most wherever there has been insecurity.

Over all, the number of acres devoted this year to opium poppy
cultivation is expected to top the figure in 2008, when poppy plantings
reached a peak of 388,000 acres, Mr. Lemahieu said. After 2008,
eradication efforts, as well as a cash incentive program for provinces
that eradicated all opium poppy crops, helped reduce cultivation
drastically through 2010.

This year three provinces — Balkh, Faryab and Takhar in the north and
west — are in danger of losing their poppy-free status, according to the
United Nations report. They are among 16 provinces that had been
declared poppy-free; such provinces receive $1 million awards from the
American Embassy, paid directly to the governor’s office.

In February, the State Department announced
that it was handing out $18.2 million in Good Performers Initiative
Awards for reducing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. A spokesman for
the American Embassy emphasized that the awards were meant to be
incentives for provinces to remain poppy-free.

Opium production has become particularly high in Helmand Province
in the south, the country’s major opium-producing area, and in Kandahar
Province. In both places, the surge of American troops helped to beat
back Taliban influence, but as those troops returned home last year,
cultivation increased drastically. More than 70 percent of opium
production now takes place in three provinces where the surge occurred.

“This country is on its way to becoming the world’s first true
narco-state,” said one international law enforcement official, who did
not want to be quoted criticizing the Afghan government. “The opium
trade is a much bigger part of the economy already than narcotics ever
were in Bolivia or Colombia.”

But Mirwais Yasini, a former head of counternarcotics for the Afghan
government and now a prominent member of Parliament, said, “I wouldn’t
go that far.”

“But if it goes on like this in the future, I am worried about that happening,” he said.

Mr. Yasini said eradication efforts had been countered by insecurity,
compounded by corruption at local, provincial and national levels. “I
don’t see anything tangible that has been done,” he said. “There is no
meaningful crop substitution and no effective enforcement.”

The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking
makes up 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, a figure
that is expected to rise as international military and development
spending declines with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.

The mining sector, the other big hope of economic self-sufficiency for
Afghanistan, is still moribund as the Afghan Parliament continues to
bicker over a mining law. A lack of security and legal clarity has also
prevented the large-scale exploitation of mineral resources.

The increase in opium poppy cultivation is attributed mainly to
historically high prices for opium, coupled with insecurity. Prices
began rising dramatically in 2010 when a poppy blight severely reduced
crop yields, but they have remained high since. Farmers earn as much as
$203 a kilogram for harvested opium, compared with only 43 cents a
kilogram for wheat or $1.25 for rice, according to the report.

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